Keyword: 2010electionbias

Judicial Watch has just released a new batch of documents forced out of the IRS that show the Obama administration’s scandalous misuse of the IRS to target Tea Party and other conservatives goes far deeper than realized. Included in the new batch of documents is a February 2012 email from Lois Lerner, who was then head of the IRS’ Exempt Organizations Branch, asking that a special program be set up to “put together some training points to help [IRS staffers] understand the potential pitfalls” of revealing too much information to Congress. Amid the hundreds of released pages, Judicial Watch also...

EXCERPT- Knowing very well most Americans objected to the "end of life" measure in the new health care legislation due to fears it could eventually give doctors a government financial incentive or even mandate to encourage severely ill patients to make life ending decisions too prematurely, Congressman Blumenauer thumbed his nose to the masses. It must be painfully obvious to Mr. Blumenauer that Americans did not want his end-of-life measure, so the Oregon Congressman decided to run around the will of the people by bureaucratic fiat. Instead, he and his fellow Democrats eventually omitted the measure from the bill only...

I am sure this has been covered, but I have a couple of questions about the tax cut/extension debate. Why are the Dems worried about the Bush Tax cuts expiring, after all I can remember during the original debate that these tax cuts only benifited the rich. Now all I hear is that if these tax cuts arnt extented for the middle class, they will be hurt(which they will be). Which is it? Next Nancy Pelosi says that unemployment benifits are the best stimulus for the economy, (since the Bernacke just said that 10% unemployment may last for 5 years,...

Newly elected Cook County Commissioner Jeff Tobolski is leaving the office of mayor of the Village of McCook, Illinois. Now, a few weeks after the election, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that he and his father before him have filled village government with relatives from top to bottom raking in a combined $350,000 in yearly salary (not including benefits), tax money elicited from a tiny village of only 200 some residents. Naturally, in another installment of the "name that party" game, the Chicago Sun-Times seemed to somehow forget to mention in its coverage of this outrageous nepotism that Tobolski is yet...

A House panel on Tuesday found Representative Charles B. Rangel guilty of 11 counts of ethical violations, ruling that his failure to pay taxes, improper solicitation of fund-raising donations and failure to accurately report his personal income had brought dishonor on the House. After a public hearing Monday that was truncated by Mr. Rangel walking out in protest, an adjudicatory subcommittee of the House ethics committee deliberated for four hours before finding him guilty of all but one of the 13 counts against him. (Two other counts, involving Mr. Rangel’s misuse of House franking privileges, were merged into one.)

No bargaining, no deals, no compromise — that's the hard-line stance that Republicans have staked in the days since seizing control of the House. Their prescription for the sluggish economy — lower taxes, huge spending cuts, less regulation, and repeal of the sweeping healthcare law just taking effect — excites the party's conservative base. But a long and ugly fight with President Obama and Senate Democrats, starting with next week's lame-duck session, could end up alienating the large number of Americans more interested in jobs than ideological battles. The midterm vote was "an expression of anger and impatience," said James...

A senior Palestinian official accused Israel on Wednesday of having sought to manipulate US mid-term elections to further hamper stalled Middle East peace talks. "It seems that the right-wing Israeli government colluded with powers inside the United States for political manoeuvres and games," Yasser Abed Rabbo, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) said. It did so "in the hope that the results of the American elections would lead to a total stalemate of the political process or steer it in a direction that suits its interests," he said in remarks carried by an official Palestinian radio station....

"Mm, your tears are so yummy and sweet! Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness! My-yummy!" -- Cartman, South Park Admittedly, it has been a lot of fun to watch the wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Left after the savage beating they received on election day. However, it's more than a little disturbing that almost no one on the Left seems to think they lost because they actually did a bad job. In other words, according to liberals: Obamacare, the failure of the stimulus, Obama bowing to foreign leaders, the way they handled the BP oil spill, trying to...

[Snip] THE JOBS REPORT FOR OCTOBER was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, and at first blush was surprisingly strong, much stronger, indeed, than expected. Payrolls expanded by 151,000 and the two previous months' were revised upward. But hold the hurrahs. The unemployment rate was stuck at 9.6%, and, toss in the underemployed and the rate remains at an elevated 17%. Moreover, the household version of the employment picture was a real bummer, showing an employment drop of 330,000. That especially weird disparity between the household and the payroll reports made us do a double-take. Happily, the...

You know all that talk about whether Keith Olbermann would ever be back on MSNBC? Well whoever speculated about that (me) was totally off – Olbermann will return to Countdown Tuesday night. From Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC: After several days of deliberation and discussion, I have determined that suspending Keith through and including Monday night’s program is an appropriate punishment for his violation of our policy. We look forward to having him back on the air Tuesday night. So basically he was suspended for two shows, and four days (counting the weekend). That seems like an amazingly short amount...

US women's groups Thursday were bracing for a fight over abortion rights and gender equality with the new conservative majority in Congress. "We now face an anti-choice majority and a new speaker of the House who will threaten to roll back hard-fought progress for women," said Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the largest women's group in the United States. Republicans by Wednesday had picked up 60 seats in the 435-seat House of Representatives, well more than the 39 they needed for a majority. At least 49 of the newcomers to the House are opposed to...

There is one African-American in the current Senate: Illinois Sen. Roland Burris, who was appointed to fill out the rest of Barack Obama's term after he was elected president... All three African-American candidates are projected to lose their races: Florida's Kendrick Meek to Marco Rubio, Georgia's Michael Thurmond to Johnny Isakson and South Carolina's Alvin Greene to Jim DeMint. (All three are Democrats.)... African-Americans are better represented in the House, where there are currently 41 black members.

~snip~ Honestly, though, I'm surprised that so many people have turned against the president. Obviously, if you've lost your job, life is tough, but did voters really believe the country was going to quickly and dramatically reverse course once he was elected? So he hasn't yet made good on every campaign promise—isn't this like being shocked that you didn't lose as much weight doing Jenny Craig as Valerie Bertinelli did, or that your new memory-foam mattress didn't magically cure your insomnia? ~snip~ But when I see Obama on television, I'm unfailingly struck by his intelligence and charisma, by his easygoing...

"Restore sanity and/or fear." That's the tongue-in-cheek slogan for a rally held on Saturday at the US Capitol, organized by liberal television comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Known for their satirical shows on the Comedy Central Channel, they attracted thousands of their moderate fans for a few hours of comedy and music--three days before mid-term elections Singer Yusuf Islam (C) preforms alongside Ozzy Osbourne (L) and comedians Stephen Colbert (2nd L) and Jon Stewart (R) during the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" on the Washington Mall, October 30, 2010. Former NBA basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (L) joins singers...

With little doubt about the outcome of tomorrow's elections, the speculation turns to what the reaction will be to the historic GOP victories. Will President Barack Obama shift toward the political center? Will all those shiny new Republican lawmakers keep their campaign promises to shrink government and control spending? Will those in the Tea Party movement remain engaged and involved once this battle has been won? All those answers will come in time but what we'll probably find out instantly is will the mainstream media abandon its self-assigned role of liberal cheerleader and return to honest reporting?

A panel full of liberals on Wednesday's Good Morning America attacked the "angry, white" Tea Partiers and lauded the historical importance of Jon Stewart. Daily Beast editor Tina Brown gushed over the liberal comedian as " the only trusted branch of government." Previewing the comic's rally on Washington this Saturday, the former Vanity Fair editor hyperbolically enthused, "You know, I mean, in the end, Stewart and Colbert, really are like the Huntley and Brinkley of today in the sense that people really, really trust them."

New prognostications show Republicans easily overtaking the House next week, but Democrats are dispatching their top figures for a last round of campaigning and injecting fresh cash into the races, in an attempt to stave off a blowout. Republicans could easily pick up 50 seats on Nov. 2, far more than the 39 needed to win the majority, according to the Hill. The newspaper's 2010 midterm election poll surveyed 17,000 likely voters in 42 toss-up districts, and the results mirror those of other recent projections. Democrats face the potential of "a political bloodbath the size of which we haven't seen...

Daytona Beach City Commissioner Derrick Henry and his campaign manager were arrested this morning and charged with absentee ballot fraud, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office said. Henry, 41, is charged with two counts of absentee ballots/voting violations, nine counts of being a principal to absentee ballots and voting violations-one count of conspiracy to commit absentee ballots and voting violations. Genesis Robinson, 21, is accused of 11 counts of being a principal to absentee ballots and voting violations and one count of conspiracy to commit absentee ballots and voting violations. All of the charges are third-degree felonies. They will be taken...

By funding numerous rightwing organisations, the mega-rich Koch brothers have duped millions into supporting big business The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related. An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party belongs...

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/october_2010/most_voters_oppose_the_reelection_of_anyone_who_voted_for_the_health_care_law_auto_bailouts_stimulus_plan Incumbents, beware: The major votes you’ve cast in Congress over the past couple years appear likely to come back to haunt you this Election Day. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most Likely Voters think their representative in Congress does not deserve reelection if he or she voted for the national health care law, the auto bailouts or the $787-billion economic stimulus plan. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Those votes also appear to be driving factors in the GOP’s consistent lead over Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot. Most strong supporters of President Obama...

How much did the left show its keister on O’Donnell’s alleged gaffe? So much so that the AP/WaPo story on the subject was almost completely rewritten last night, and without an official correction. After the break I will have screen caps and a cut and paste of the text of the article, but let’s start with just the first paragraph. Before: WILMINGTON, Del. — Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from...

In case Arianna Huffington plotting to spend an estimated quarter-million dollars on buses to the liberal Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally didn’t paint it as an Obama event, how about Oprah Winfrey? The Obama-endorsing, Obama-campaign-stumping Winfrey appeared via satellite on Thursday night’s episode of The Daily Show to announce that she was going to fly Stewart’s audience to Washington, D.C., for the so-called Stewart half, the “Rally to Restore Sanity." "I know that you've got this huge event coming up, and I'm really excited about it, because I think that we need a bit more sanity in the world," she said....

Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher reports voter intimidation in Harris County, Texas (Houston) by volunteer poll watchers trained by King Street Patriots, a local non-partisan group who started the True The Vote campaign. Tommy leads with this inflammatory paragraph saying: In a story that’s sure to draw comparisons to the New Black Panther Party member who brandished a nightstick at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, a Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots has been accused of “1960s style” voter intimidation in primarily minority precincts on the first day of early voting in Texas. The group is being sued by...

Sometimes the bias can't get any clearer: A MSNBC graphic on Monday mocked GOP senatorial candidates with the headline, "American Freak Show: Angle, Paul, O'Donnell: New Faces in Politics." American Freak Show is also the title of guest Willie Geist's new book on politics, but all the apparent "freaks" discussed in the piece were Republicans. The tone of the segment made it even more clear. Geist complained to Jansing and Co. Host Chris Jansing, "The frustration about this is, you have to hand in a book so early

GRAND JUNCTION, Colorado (AFP) – A billboard depicting Barack Obama as an Islamist suicide bomber, a gay and a Mexican bandit has triggered a storm of criticism in a western US city weeks ahead of crucial polls. The colourful poster of the US president -- under the ironic slogan "Vote DemocRAT" -- is attracting attention from media worldwide and from people clogging a local parking lot for a closer look.

It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany exactly where you'd expect: at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in to speak at something called the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners. Palin — who earlier this morning held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate — is railing against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republican hacks in Delaware and...

Viacom networks MTV, BET and CMT are giving an hour of free air time to President Obama less than three weeks before the midterm elections. The so-called “A Conversation with President Obama” will be live and commercial-free on six Viacom networks at 4 p.m. on Thursday. The networks will not give equal time to a Republican before the election, according to a spokeswoman. MTV denies that the Obama hour of TV is political, despite the timing, weeks before the midterm elections.

In Chicago, WIND radio show host William Kelly was on a mission to get answers from current mayoral candidate and Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel. Despite the other reporters acting as a force to protect Rahm against Kelly’s tough questions over the stimulus bill and his residency, his persistence is highly entertaining.

When President Obama sits down for his MTV town hall this Thursday, the audience of young people who will ask him questions will have been gathered by a casting call. According to the casting call for the event from talent agency Backstage.com, first reported by National Review Online, the company requests applications for the event, asking what issues the person is “passionate about,” requiring a “short description of your political views,” and also asks for a recent photo.

From Tea Party activists to â€śmama grizzlies,â€ť the number of female conservative candidates in this yearâ€™s election is unprecedented. This surge in the number of right-leaning ladies has not only caught the Democratic Partyâ€™s attention. Several media outlets have jumped on board to lend support to the female democratic candidates who are in danger of losing their seats. Â Politico dedicated roughly 1300 words to the subject of female candidates in this yearâ€™s election in an Oct. 12 article, but it could only spare about 174 words on the conservative candidates. The article could easily double as a campaign literature touting...

If you believe any of the hogwash about the irrelevance of the religious right to this election, take a look at the numerous right-wing evangelical websites promoting the 40/40 Prayer Vigil, which began in September with a prayer for Christian voter registration and ends--you guessed it--just before election day, Nov. 2. The 40/40 stands for the forty days and forty nights that Jesus supposedly spent wandering in the desert before finally saying no to Satan's temptations. I'm sure that you won't have any trouble figuring out which political party the Southern Baptist Convention--America's largest religious denomination and one of the...

The Republican candidate for governor, Carl P. Paladino, told a gathering in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable, and criticized his opponent, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, for marching in a gay pride parade earlier this year.Addressing Orthodox Jewish leaders, Mr. Paladino described his opposition to same-sex marriage.“That’s not how God created us,” he said, reading from a prepared address.snip Mr. Paladino declined a request to be interviewed after his appearance. His campaign manager, Michael R. Caputo, denied assertions that Mr. Paladino was antigay, and noted that he employed a...

The Republicans have cornered the market on beauty because they've cornered the market on crazy, and if they've failed to produce a "candidate" in Delaware, they've succeeded in producing a star, and have made all the tut-tutting pundits look as behind the times as the newspapers they serve. Wherever populism reared its head, there used to be sweaty men; now — in country music, at Fox, and in crossover "Islamaphobe" bloggers who get their picture pasted on the Sunday Times — there are at least semi-sexy women. The Democrats didn't think they had to worry about any of this. They...

Time magazine's news judgment is truly puzzling. With just weeks to go before a crucial midterm election, their cover story package is ten pages stuffed with “The Secret World of Extreme Militias.” Voters are poised to sweep a pile of Democrats out of office from coast to coast, and they're camped in Zanesville, Ohio with a right-wing militia that claims 300 members as the nation's number one news story? (Katie Couric tweeted on Wednesday that she was eagerly reading it.) Time editor Richard Stengel announced they gave new hire Barton Gellman six months in the field chasing the whisper of...

(RollingStone.com) -- Jon Stewart has revealed the location of his Rally to Restore Sanity (and Stephen Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive): The east end of Washington D.C.'s National Mall, between 3rd and 7th Streets.

Republican Carl Paladino, a tea party candidate for governor of New York, said Monday on NBC's "Today" show that he doesn't discriminate against homosexuals. On Sunday, in a discussion of gay marriage at a meeting with Brooklyn Hasidic Jewish leaders, Paladino said children were being "brainwashed" into accepting homosexuality as "valid."

Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Snyder v. Phelps, a case about the nature and scope of basic rights -- those of free speech vs. those of privacy. But this case is fundamentally about wrongs and the law's imperfect ability to redress them. The facts of the case are well known. Matthew Snyder, a Marine lance corporal from Westminster, Md., was killed in the line of duty in Iraq in 2006. The Rev. Fred Phelps and members of his Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church traveled more than 1,000 miles to Maryland to picket his funeral and draw attention...

Elizabeth Hasselbeck, co-host on the The View, says that the Tea Party is like bed bugs in that they are many in number, nobody knows where they are coming from, and they are “powerful little suckers.” “Everyone thinks the Tea Party is automatically in favor of the Republicans,” said Hasselbeck during Tuesday morning’s “Hot Topics” segment. “The Republicans don’t even have control of them. They’re like bed bugs, okay? My point being–they are many in number and nobody knows where they’re coming from, but they are powerful little suckers and they took the wind out of Mike Castle in Delaware.”

I'm still in shock from reading this news on Stereogum about primitivist drummer and doll-voiced Velvet, Moe Tucker being a Tea Party fanatic. Say it ain't so Moe. It's like finding out that Henry Rollins has just been wearing a fake muscle suit all these years and he's really a skinny, mild-mannered pushover. Moe's strayed a long way off from being in a band at center of 1960's and 70's American counter culture. She's best known for her unrelenting, tribal drumming style of the time -- opting to take her bass drum, turn it upright and pound away on it...

In trying to understand how so many Americans adore people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh I have come to this critical understanding: Poorly educated, terribly informed, intellectually deficient and downright stupid people need idols. They feel angry, frustrated, ignored, cheated and disillusioned by so much going on in American society. They find the emotional, political and philosophical rants by talk show, loud mouth celebrities matching and justifying their feelings. Of course, those celebrities work hard to fan the flames of all that unhappiness and discontent, and also perpetuate ignorance. They sell stupidity to gullible dummies,...

MTV Networks is planning to host a live town hall with President Obama October 14, an executive familiar with the program confirms to TVNewser. The town hall, which was first reported this morning by Politico’s Playbook, will be held Thursday October 14 at 4 PM, and will run on MTV, BET, CMT, MTV Tr3s and other MTV Networks. The executive also said the event would be streamed live online via the network’s websites. Politico reports that MTV’s Sway Calloway, CMT’s Kate Cook and BET’s April Woodard will host the town hall, which will have an audience comprised of young people.

Ed Rendell to left on MSNBC: ‘Get over it’ By: Andy Barr October 5, 2010 12:44 PM EDT Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says discouraged liberals need to “get over it” and support the Democratic Party, before they regret it. “This isn't about President [Barack] Obama,” Rendell said on MSNBC’s “Last Word” Monday night. “It's about whether the Democratic Party, not perfect, but certainly bent on trying to preserve theories in government and progressive practices, is going to be in charge of the Congress or the Republican Party. And it's not the Republican Party of old. This is a scary Republican...

MSNBC, once the also-ran, now the No. 2 cable news channel, has a new tagline that embraces its progressive political identity. The tagline, “Lean Forward,” will be publicly unveiled Tuesday, at the start of a two-year advertising campaign intended to raise awareness of the channel among viewers, advertisers and distributors. The tagline “defines us and defines our competition,” said Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, his inference being that the Fox News Channel, the No. 1 cable news channel and a home for conservatives, is leaning backwards. Fox’s best-known tagline is “Fair and Balanced.” Some of the new MSNBC ads...

Boiling Mad: A surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement—where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics They burst on the scene at the height of the Great Recession—angry voters gathering by the thousands to rail against bailouts and big government. Evoking the Founding Fathers, they called themselves the Tea Party. Within the year, they had changed the terms of debate in Washington, emboldening Republicans and confounding a new administration's ability to get things done. Boiling Mad is Kate Zernike's eye-opening look inside the Tea Party, introducing us...

Reagan and Goldwater Would Be Considered 'RINOs' Today, Says Meghan McCain; CNN Doesn't Challenge Her Claim By Matt Hadro Created 10/01/2010 - 15:39 Meghan McCain apparently thinks there will be a "bloodletting" in the GOP in the next election, because the party has no room for controversial socially liberal figures like her. Appearing on CNN's "American Morning" Thursday, McCain criticized the current state of the Republican Party, which she believes is too conservative and narrow-minded to include more moderate and independent thinkers like herself. This focus, McCain warned, will cut down on the number of party voters. When the subject...

A new poll released by Gallup shows that American distrust in the mass media has reached a record high. This is the fourth straight year that a majority of respondents have said that they have little or no trust in the media, but the 57% who say that this year is a new record for the poll. According to the poll, 48% of respondents say the media is too liberal, 15% say it is too conservative and 33% say it is “just right.” You can see how the responses have changed over the years here: (snip to picture of chart)...